Mystery Comedy Fiction

When Izzy Spellman, PI, is arrested for the fourth time in three months, she writes it off as a job hazard. She's been (obsessively) keeping surveillance on a suspicious next door neighbor (suspect's name: John Brown), convinced he's up to no good - even if her parents (the management at Spellman Investigations) are not.

It begins as an innocent trip to the deli-mart, on a quest for nachos. But Stephanie Plum and her partner, Lula, are clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time. A robbery leads to an explosion, which leads to the destruction of yet another car. It would be just another day in the life of Stephanie Plum, except that she becomes the target of a gang—and of an even scarier, more dangerous force that comes to Trenton. With super bounty hunter Ranger acting more mysteriously than ever (and the tension with vice cop Joe Morelli getting hotter), she finds herself with a decision to make.

Serge is back with a bullet, torn between homicide and souvenirs. So is Coleman, torn between getting hammered and getting more hammered. Then there's good ol' Jim Davenport, the E-Team, the Diaz Brothers, and Johnny Vegas, the Accidental Virgin, cranking up the fevered action as the pot boils over on a street called Lobster Lane.

The Chicago Tribune has dubbed Elmore Leonard, “the coolest, hottest writer in America.” In the same league as the legendary great ones—John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain—Leonard demonstrates his remarkable mastery with Get Shorty, one of the most adored of his forty-plus novels. The basis of the hit movie starring John Travolta and Danny DeVito, Get Shorty chronicles the over-the-top, sometimes violent Hollywood misadventures of a Florida mob loan shark who chases a deadbeat client all the way to Tinseltown and decides to stick around and make movies.

Maud Drennan is a dedicated caretaker, but her sunny, capable disposition and snappy quips mask a deep sadness. A tragic childhood event left her in the company of a cast of patron saints who pop in and out of her life like unwelcome tourists. She tries to find solace in her hard work in London...but then she meets the inimitable Mr. Flood. A menace by all accounts, Cathal Flood is a widower living alone in a Gothic Dorset mansion crawling with collector's items and feral cats.

Avery Shaw is back from her honeymoon and on the prowl for a story. She wants to prove that marriage has softened her - nothing ever could - and the way she’s going to do that is by rocking the news world with something monumental. Then a body drops in her neighborhood, only blocks away from her house, and the hunt is on. The victim is divorced, having an affair with a married coworker, and generally unlikable. Avery has multiple places to look for a suspect...and then another woman dies only a block away from Avery’s house, and the entire dynamic of the story changes.

Once upon a time a young couple met and fell in love. You probably know that story, and how it ended (hint: badly). Only here’s the thing: That’s not how it ended at all. Romeo and Juliet are alive and well and the parents of seven kids. I’m the oldest, with the emphasis on ‘old’—a certified spinster at twenty, and happy to stay that way. It’s not easy to keep your taste for romance with parents like mine. Picture it—constant monologues, passionate declarations, fighting, making up, making out … it’s exhausting.

A few nights before Christmas, Meg is awakened when Michael is summoned to the New Life Baptist Church, where someone has rigged a cage full of skunks in the choir loft. The lengthy process of de-skunking the church requires its annual pre-Christmas concert to relocate to Trinity Episcopal, despite the protests of Mr. Vess, an elderly vestryman.

I'm Bree Mortimer, and I can bring ghosts back to life. The hot-as-Hades Roman Centurion in my bedroom is living proof that I can raise the dead. Now, all I have to do is stop him from swimming naked in the duck pond and trying to stab anyone with a man bun, and my life will be perfect. Hah. That's a joke. My life is a spooktacular failure. I've got two ghostly lovers who are desperate for me to bring them back, too, but if I don't figure out how to control my new magical powers, there could be grave consequences.

Seth Weinstein always knew Tina was way, way, way out of his league. Which is why he’s still astonished that he’s on a plane heading for their wedding in Florida. The Groom Posse has already pulled an airport prank on him - and he’s survived! It should be easy going from now on. But Seth has absolutely no idea what he’s about to get into. A simple drink or two with the boys sparks a series of events that will pit Seth and his friends against everything and everyone imaginable.

At first, high school freshmen Rex McClendon and Leif Nelson believe what they’ve been told - that local students’ strange demises at Whitewood, a local reformatory, were all tragic accidents. But when the shoot for their low-budget horror masterpiece, PolterDog, goes horribly awry - and their best friend, Alicia Boykins, is sent to Whitewood - Rex and Leif are forced to question everything they know about their unassuming hometown and its cherished school for delinquents.

Callahan Garrity is the owner of house mouse, a cleaning service that tidies up after Atlanta's elite. She's also a former cop and a part-time sleuth.... Keeping Rita Fontaine, a washed-up 1960s teenage rock star, out of jail is a tough job. It's nothing less than murder when Stu Hightower, the vain, temperamental president of a thriving Atlanta recording company, is found murdered in the den of his posh home. His only companions are the slug in his heart and Rita, dead drunk and looking guilty.

After putting her would-be-murderer behind bars, Claire Hartley is determined to get back to planning elaborate marriage proposals and exploring her undefined relationship with grumpy filmmaker Luke. If she could just kick her new sleepwalking habit, everything would be perfect. Unfortunately, perfect isn't in the cards for Claire when her archnemesis slaps her with a lawsuit, someone from her past comes knocking, and she becomes the target of mysterious threats that feel oddly familiar.

FBI special agent Kate O’Hare has made it her mission to nail international con artist Nicolas Fox. When she discovers his plot to plunder a venture capitalist’s 20th-story Chicago penthouse of all its cash and treasures while the self-proclaimed "King of Hostile Takeovers" is getting married, Kate is 85 percent - okay maybe 92 percent - sure that she’s finally going to bag Nick Fox. Problem is, first Kate has to convince her boss, building security, and maybe even herself, that wedding planner Merrill Stubing is actually Nicolas Fox. Second, she has to figure out how to corner and capture him without disrupting the event of the year.

It’s Davis Way’s first slot-tournament season. And it may be her last. Things are dicey at work. A personal assistant goes missing, a little old lady goes on a suspicious winning streak, and a Bellissimo executive goes gaga for Davis. She follows a disappearing slot-tournament player trail to the So Help Me God Pentecostal Church in Beehive, Alabama, then jumps headlong into a high stakes holy scandal. She’s on a losing streak at home, too. Her days, nights, and dinners run together, as Davis juggles a revolving door of uninvited guests, namely her rotten ex-ex-husband, Eddie Crawford.

The Bombay Family of Assassins have hung up their gun belts, vials of undetectable poisons, and throwing knives for good. Or have they? The kids of the newest generation have itchy trigger fingers and an opportunity pops up that's too good to refuse.

Rhiannon Lewis should be happy. Her cheating fiancé is in jail – framed for the depraved killing spree she committed. Her ex-lover is chopped up and buried where no-one will find him. But there’s one small problem. She’s pregnant. And as much as Rhiannon wants to continue working her way through her kill lists, a small voice inside is trying to make her stop. Now Rhiannon has to choose – motherhood or murder.

Sheriff Bo Tully is the kind of western lawman who's as good with the ladies as he is with his guns, and he never lets a death threat get in the way of a good barbecue. He's a man with a sense of humor, which comes in handy when trying to establish order in Blight County. In this latest tale, Tully pursues a 75-year-old missing persons case in which a pair of gold miners (a two-man drilling team known as a double-jack) mysteriously disappeared just as they hit the mother lode in a remote part of Blight County.

Business has never been better for Nura Khan, a third-generation matchmaker in Atlanta. Her exclusive clientele benefits from her impeccable track record. And while a single thirty-one-year-old matchmaker would normally raise some perfectly threaded eyebrows in the community, Nura’s childhood best friend, Azar, is willing to double as her pretend fiancé at her clients’ weddings—even though Nura’s feelings for him might not be so pretend.

At any moment a perfect summer day in Crozet, Virginia - nestled within the Blue Ridge Mountains - might turn stormy and tempestuous, as Harry knows too well when a squall suddenly sweeps in. In a blink Harry's pickup nearly collides with a careening red car that then swerves into a ditch. Harry recognizes the dead driver slumped over the vehicle's steering wheel: Barbara Leader was nurse and confidante to former Virginia governor Sam Holloway.